How the sun trembles in the windy sunset.
Through the breaks in the trees
Its multitudinous rays
Toss like strands
In a bright flowing mane.
They fuse together, glittering
Like the flash of blades,
Each flash
Obscuring
Its predecessor…
The wood, misty under the slanting rays,
Sketches a royal crest,
Receives the sun’s teeth in its curly head,
Is distracted, dispersed, pale.
But already, like the final curtain,
The edge of the wood is moving towards darkness,
The sun prepares to set sail,
The distance slackens, the sky’s an orphan…
Clumps of trees
Shuffle wildly,
Silently their half-transparent,
Ambiguous, recumbent shadows
Drift away.
And already the trees,
On the threshold
Of the unknown night,
Shiver,
No longer
Believing in their shadows
Once they’ve fled.
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By Новелла Николаевна Матвеева (Novella Nikolayevna Matveyeva)
(1965)
translated by Daniel Weissbort
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Beneath is the original Russian Cyrillic version of the poem.
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Как дрожит на ветреном закате
Как дрожит на ветреном закате
Солнце сквозь древесные прорывы!
Тьмы лучей волнуются, как пряди
Золотой взвивающейся гривы.
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Перепутываются, сверкают
Фехтовальным блеском пререканья,
Новые сверкания свергают
С трона предыдущее сверканье.
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Дымный под наклонными лучами,
Образующими царский гребень,
Зубья солнца в кудри получая,
Лес растерян, распылен и бледен.
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Но уже, как занавес к закрытью,
К темноте край леса тяготеет,
Солнце наклоняется к отплытью,
Даль слабеет, небо сиротеет.
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Пятна рощ сместились, как шальные,
Тихо от деревьев отлетели
Их полупрозрачные, двойные,
Ложные, двусмысленные тени.
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И уже деревья у преддверья
Неизвестной ночи задрожали,
И уже своим теням не верят,
Потому что тени убежали.
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Additional information: Matveyeva was born on 7 October 1934 in Pushkin, Saint Petersburg (then Leningrad). She suffered the fate of so many war children and was brought up in children’s homes and, later, apparently spent much of her time in hospitals. She was a Russian bard, poet, writer, screenwriter, dramatist, and literary scientist.
Novella was also the cousin of poet Ivan Matveyev (Elagin). Her first poetry collection, Lyrics, was published in 1961 which was the same year she was admitted to the Union of Soviet Writers.
From the end of the 1950s on Matveyeva composed songs to her poetry and performed them, accompanying herself on a seven-string guitar. The element of fantasy and the dreamlike atmosphere of much of her poetry is unusual in the Soviet context.
In 1998 Matveyeva received the Russian State Pushkin Prize in poetry, and in 2002, she received the Russian Federation State Prize in Literature and Arts for her poetry collection Jasmine. Matveyeva died on 4 September 2016 at the age of 81 in Moscow Oblast.
Rambling At The Bridge Head 